Tag: Ronald Golding

“When Britain stood alone…he mobi­lized the Eng­lish lan­guage, and sent it into bat­tle.” John Kennedy, para­phras­ing Edward R. Mur­row

Q: The­Ques­tion tries to pro­vide our read­ers with the most reli­able knowl­edge from experts in var­i­ous fields. As we cel­e­brate Nation­al Churchill Day, April 9th, we would appre­ci­ate your thoughts on three ques­tions. These are cur­rent­ly post­ed with­out respons­es on our web­site: Was Win­ston Churchill real­ly that good an artist? What made him a great leader? What was his great­est achieve­ment?

TheQuestion: Churchill as Artist

​Please take a vir­tu­al tour of Hills­dale College’s recent exhi­bi­tion of Churchill paint­ings and arti­facts.…

Churchill had “a rep­u­ta­tion for brusque­ness strength­ened by his han­dling of the com­mon folk,” his post­war body­guard Ronald Gold­ing con­tin­ued.

He had the habit of sum­ming peo­ple up after two sen­tences of con­ver­sa­tion. They were clas­si­fied, it seemed to me, as either “inter­est­ing” or “unin­ter­est­ing.” With the for­mer, con­ver­sa­tion ensued; with the lat­ter, Churchill would ignore them. On such occa­sions Mrs. Churchill fre­quent­ly came to the res­cue, engag­ing the luck­less in con­ver­sa­tion.…

Scot­land Yard Detec­tive Ron Gold­ing (behind WSC sport­ing his “out­size air force mous­tache”) with Churchill to receive the Free­dom of the City of Edin­burgh, 27 April 1946.

Win­ston Churchill was a Vic­to­ri­an, with most of the atti­tudes of his class and time toward the com­mon folk. “Ser­vants exist to save one trou­ble,” he told his wife in 1928, “and sh[oul]d nev­er be allowed to dis­turb one’s inner peace.”

Once before World War II he arrived in a vio­lent rain­storm at his friend Max­ine Elliott’s Chateau d’Horizon in the South of France.…